King 



constantly being made, and visits to 

 patriots in gaol and out, until I pon- 

 dered in silence, with more doubt 

 than ever, whether Bloomingdale was 

 to become the last refuge of sanity, 

 since, outside of Bloomingdale, the 

 world was obviously more insane than 

 within it. 



The situation was really not un- 

 like one of Frank Stockton's novels. 

 There were two elderly men ; bald- 

 headed ; gray-haired, or at least sable- 

 silvered, like Hamlet's father; literary 

 and scientific gentlemen of a respecta- 

 bility that appalled even the Knicker- 

 bocker Club and themselves ; persons 

 who had never even been in gaol or 

 the police-court, and who carried a 

 sort of aureole of title-pages round 

 their heads to protect them from vul- 

 gar sunshine ; and these two profes- 

 sors were plunged suddenly up to 

 their necks in a seething caldron of 

 barbarous passion as though they 

 174 



